January 21st, 2008
By my last count, my wife and I have lived in five apartments in seven years. That means we’ve seen a lot of apartments for rent. Some of them beautiful, some of them awful. The apartment we saw in Sunset Park yesterday made those awful ones look like Mr. Drummond’s pad on “Diff’rent Strokes.”
Never mind the hour it took just to get to Sunset Park from Greenpoint. (Who’s running the upgrade of the G line, the Big Dig people?). And never mind that we never would have moved to this block, with its heavy truck and bus traffic on a Sunday afternoon and its industrial shops and vacant lots. And if we were sensible people, we would have left upon seeing the exterior of the building — shingles so decayed, they looked like rusty iron. But because we’re Minnesotans and polite to a fault, we waited in the freezing cold on for the landlord, who arrived 30 minutes late. Shortly before he arrived, Linda suggested that we leave. No way, I said. We’d already learned of the fines this landlord racked up for code violations and a broken boiler (read: no heat). This was already so bad, so sketchy, that we just had to see what was inside.
What was inside: a shooting gallery straight out of a William Burroughs novel. It had been billed on Craigslist as a 2 BR apartment with fresh paint. Asking rent: $1500/month, high for the neighborhood. If I was “handy” and did some “painting and tiling,” rent would be $1300.
About 15 minutes later — worried that I would forget what I saw — I scribbled these notes down at a diner two blocks away:
The landlord, 30 mins late, said he was sorry “for the delay” due to traffic. It was Sunday afternoon.
In foyer, first-floor apartment door has a fist-hole. Someone — surely not a burglar! — punched through it to unlatch deadbolt from the other side and gain entry. Unlit staircase that corkscrewed slightly to the right. Huge chunks of paint and debris littered the stairs. (But stairs are always gross in apartment buildings.)
Inside apartment: Peeled paint hanging in strips from the tin ceiling. Yellowed linoleum floors buckled and curled back at every edge (easily 50 years old). Linda’s foot sinks into hole in floor in bedroom. Windows are so dirty, I cannot see through them. Debris everywhere — ancient deflated football, chunks of furniture, etc. Curious: a brand-new telescope in living room (someone peeping on neighbors?). No closets. No doors, in fact. Small room off bedroom called “art room.” Living room carpet removed, but remnants of carpet back and glue everywhere. No appliances in kitchen. Refrigerator in dining room (without door). No sink, no counter. Landlord says there are “no leaks in the ceiling, or we’d hear about it from the downstairs neighbors.” Because there are leaks in these floors, I think. Are you going to do anything with these floors, I ask. No, we weren’t going to do anything with them, the landlord says.
As I wrote this all down, I paused to look up at my wife, who was scanning the diner menu. I posed a disturbing possibility … we counted the rooms … we retraced our steps…
It was a $1300 apartment that had no bathroom.
Property records suggested that the landlord bought the property just a few years ago. It was still zoned as a one-family home, although the “no heat” complaint came not long after his purchase of the property. My guess is that the building house illegal occupants, and he shut off the heat to roust them out. The landlord told us he’d created a split-level apartment with the basement and first floor (where the only bathroom was probably located)
But now he was stuck with a second floor that didn’t have a bathroom or a proper kitchen. He wanted rental tenants to gut, clean, paint, refloor and build a bathroom and kitchen — and pay $1300 per month to do it.
As Linda and I made our way home, I fumed and pouted on the subway. If I owned a property … when do people cross that line … if I only had some money. Many of you have probably heard a similar rant. But I cooled off, and we agreed that it was worth the trip, worth the freezing temperature, worth the stomach-turning apartment showing. It put our apartment search in perspective and made us appreciate some of our past apartments and landlords a bit more. There are apartments like that one — and worse ones — all over New York, and we’re lucky to enjoy a certain standard of living.
Our only regret is that we did not take pictures.